The title of this post comes from an article that just came out in JAMA called System-Level Factors and Time Spent on Electronic Health Records by Primary Care Physicians. It’s quite sad. Did you know that Primary care physicians (PCPs) spend the most time on the EHR of any specialty? Couple that with being one of the lowest-paid specialties and then sprinkle in quality metrics, dealing with administrators, doing useless MOC, and grinding through 25 patients a day and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.
You can read the article itself but here are the conclusions:
EHR time burden, and the burnout associated with this burden, represent a serious threat to the PCP workforce. Our study identified significant variation in EHR time across both individual PCPs and PCPs within clinics. We found that team and clinic factors, such as teamwork on orders, having a pharmacy technician, and practicing in a CHC, were associated with lesser EHR time. These findings can guide health system leaders as they develop new approaches to care delivery that address the burden of the EHR for PCPs and enhance the sustainability of modern primary care practice
Pretty interesting, right? All you need is a full team, a pharmacy technician, and a community health center and you are good to go. Do you know what would really ENHANCE the sustainability of modern primary care practices?
DIRECT PRIMARY CARE
I wish they would measure the time we spend on the EHR, whether it’s Atlas or Hint or whichever. Even better, I wish they would compare what we PUT in the EHR as far as pertinent and in-depth assessments vs. their rushed garbage that no other doctor would want to read. DPC would blow their minds. But they will never do that because it would break the system and we can’t have that.
Okay, that was just my rant for the day. What do you think?